Question

I’m trying to run a PHP script continually in the background via the command line in Linux. I have tried the command php filename.php & but it seems like the script execution terminates very quickly, while it should keep running until the process is terminated.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Are you sure the script doesn’t contain any errors? This is what normally makes "execution terminates very quickly".
First, append:

error_reporting(E_ALL); ini_set('display_errors', 1);

at the top of your script to display any errors it may have, then you can use :

nohup php filename.php &

nohup runs a command even if the session is disconnected or the user
logs out.

OR

nohup php filename.php >/dev/null 2>&1 &

Same as above but doesn’t create nohup.out file.

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You can also use:
ignore_user_abort(1);

Set whether a client disconnect should abort script execution

`set_time_limit(0);`

Limits the script maximum execution time, in this case it will run until the
process finishes or the apache process restarts.

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#Notes
The php and the filename.php paths may be provided as a full-path, instead of php and filename.php, you can use /usr/bin/php and /full/path/to/filename.php.
Full Path is recommended to avoid file not found errors.